CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The probe into the space shuttle Columbia disaster will continue in Cape Canaveral this week as investigators focus on practices at Kennedy Space Center and efforts to recover and analyze wreckage from the Feb. 1 accident.
In a public hearing Tuesday, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board will hear a briefing on safety and mission assurance measures at the center where Columbia launched Jan. 16. The board wants basic information on how things work at KSC.
The next day, investigators will hear testimony on the recovery and analysis of more than 43,000 pounds of shuttle wreckage that has been found in an area that stretches from south of Dallas to Louisiana.
Independent aerospace experts will describe methods that could be employed to analyze the debris as part of the larger effort to pinpoint the cause of the accident, which killed seven astronauts.
Board spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Tyrone Woodyard said Tuesday's hearing is designed to educate the board on the role KSC plays in the shuttle program and the type of safety and mission-assurance programs in place at the spaceport.
Witnesses Tuesday will include KSC Director Roy Bridges; Bill Higgins, chief of NASA's shuttle processing safety and mission assurance division at KSC; and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Aloysius Casey, an independent consultant considered an expert on space systems, launch vehicles and aircraft. The hearing Wednesday will enable the board "to get an understanding of where debris landed, how it was collected and how it was handled," Woodyard said.
Four witnesses will testify Wednesday, including Mike Rudolphi, deputy director of NASA's Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss., and Steve Altemus, a NASA Shuttle Test Director at KSC.
Rudolphi and Altemus have been heavily involved with the recovery of shuttle debris and shipment of the wreckage to KSC, where it has been stored and analyzed.
Dr. Gregory Kovacs, an associate professor of electronics at Stanford University, and Mark Tanner, a consulting aerospace engineer, also will be questioned by the board. Kovacs and Tanner both specialize in the forensic analysis of accident debris.
The public may attend both events.
"There are no questions from the audience or anything like that. It's not a town hall meeting," said Woodyard. "But they can observe the process."
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